Business Ethics In The Face Of Monopolistic Threats

In view of the increasing commercialization of the Free Software movement,
it has become important to clarify a matter of business ethics that is all
too often overlooked.

This has to do with monopolies. Copyright law allows the authors of
computer programs to have, for a limited period of time, monopoly rights
to modifying and copying the program. For the sake of illustration, let's
compare this monopoly to a monopoly of oranges: Imagine that in the whole
world there was only one place where orange trees grow, and imagine
furthermore that I am the owner of that area. Then I have a monopoly of
oranges. Let's suppose that I am generous and put up a sign that says
"Everyone is welcome to come and pick oranges". It won't take long before
some entrepreneurial people pick more oranges than they want to eat
themselves, and start a business of selling oranges. As long as there are
still plenty of oranges for everyone who wants to pick oranges, I wouldn't
mind that. Effectively, what the businesses are selling is the
convenience of being able to conveniently buy the oranges, without
bothering about the harvest and transportation of the oranges.

This situation is comparable to a market for software which can be freely
copied and redistributed, without any monopolies.

However, I would get very upset if someone came and harvested all
oranges in order to gain control of the market and sell the oranges
at a higher price. That would be exploiting my generosity in a totally
unethical manner.

In the same way, when I contribute to a Free Software project, then I
want my contribution to be for everyone's benefit, and I do not want anyone
to turn it into a monopoly. In fact the whole point of the Free Software
movement is to get rid of software monopolies. (Proprietary software is
software which has an "owner" who has a monopoly through having the right to
decide who can see the source code, who may modify the program, and who may
copy it for purposes of further distribution. Free Software is software
where every user has these rights.)

The Free Software community welcomes businesses to get involved. We don't
mind when the involved companies derive a profit from their involvement
(why else would be profit-oriented company get involved) as long as these
companies fight together with us at least against the worst software
monopolies.

In particular, we think that every business which chooses to use the
fruits of our generosity, and to derive an economic benefit from
these Free Software programs, should

actively support the efforts of the Free Software movement to
create alternatives for proprietary software which is particularly
dangerous because of an effective monopoly, or because of vendor
lock-in

refrain from making any political statements in favor of software
patents in any form or shape

If you earn money through distributing an improved version of some
DotGNU software, we expect you to also make significant contributions
to the development project, for everyone's benefit. While the GNU General
Public License does not require you to do this, if you don't do this we will
feel that you have unfairly exploited the generosity of DotGNU's volunteer
contributors who work hard with little or no personal benefit with the goal
of setting the IT world free from some dangerous monopolies.

Don't align your business interests with those of Microsoft Corp,
which effectively controls the specifications for .NET - There are strong
indications that from a business strategy perspective, these technologies
were designed specifically with the goal to unleash a destructive "Hailstorm"
against both Sun's Java platform and against the Open Source movement which
has become a serious threat for Microsoft's monopolistic strategies. While
there is nothing wrong in principle with making Free Software commercial
offerings based on the ".NET on Unix" idea, if you choose this route it is
your responsibility to make sure that your business and your customers are
not at Microsoft's mercy.